Smiling About Nightmares: The Week In Thanks

One good thing about nightmares - they make real life seem so darn good.

I dreamed that for some reason I'd concluded with a co-worker that it would be advantageous to convince one of my band members that she had a terminal illness. So we went to the hospital, did the deed, took turns consoling her hysterics afterward. Flash to me in my office having a routine visit with a couple of co-workers, when someone interrupts by tossing the door slightly open and tells me that I might want to consider leaving the building - there were rumors that the Department of Justice might get involved.

So if I'm a little more chipper than usual this morning, it's because for part of it I thought that I might be cruel and arrested, and woke up facing my usual Sunday slate of singing, football and tutoring.

Football has continued to be spectacular, as both Notre Dame and Alabama rallied dramatically from fourth quarter deficits to continue their undefeated seasons. Meanwhile my fantasy football team is playing solidly, and my fantasy basketball team has exploded out of the gate with good performances.

Real basketball at NCHS is just around the corner, like Christmas, with tryouts on Monday. What size and speed of boys will be under the lights for Ryan and I to play with? Last year's team won less than 25% of their games as freshmen, this year's group won 75%, so naturally the prospects are brighter. In the end, what matters is the character of the team - the way they treat each other and their responsibilities in the classroom and within the game. Our challenge as coaches is to use that momentum of previous success into an asset and not an excuse to coast. Even if they were poor, though, the thought of sidling up with Ryan and the other coaches for another four months to turn boys more into men by playing a game is exciting.

I mentioned earlier that my boss allowed me to start fortifying my staff with a new hire. I got all of the paperwork taken care of, had a few people visit me with interest in the job. No one's officially applied so far as I can tell, but I'm still optimistic that when the posting comes down on November 6, we will have at least one talented candidate in our hands. As I've told several people happily on several occasions this week, this would have a tremendous benefit on the unit's continuity plan over the next three years. If provides just the depth we need to enable several of my co-workers to develop as needed to handle some anticipated turnover.

There were a handful of situations this week where those old swells of irritation rose up within me. Why is such-and-such taking so long for so-and-so to do? Why is this guy acting so obstructively? Why can't she come up with a plan and carry it through? Why is he complaining about this again?

And fortunately the recently developed habits - the levees of peace to repel the swells, if you will - withstood them all. Such-and-such is taking a long time, but since it's going to result in a cutback of some excess stuff, at least I get to enjoy that stuff for a while longer. He may be acting obstructively, but the path that he's blocking is not so much better than my current one that it's the end of the world, in fact the path he's forcing me on might just be better after all. She can't follow through on a plan, but that's one of her strengths too, since she's extremely flexible. He's complaining about this because when he's done, he'll feel better and be able to carry on merrily for a good long while.

To identify relationship anger land mines and charge gracefully past them is to feel like a strong person. I suppose there's even a connection there with my lead-off paragraph - these were all potential waking nightmares had I slipped into some sort of white-collar rage, but now I can just look back at them with a smile at their emptiness.